I have come across no greater craftsman of blue-collar heartache than Richard Russo. His depictions of poverty-stricken small towns and the dichotomy between their equally poverty-stricken inhabitants and their wealthy ones are so lifelike as to have walked directly out of the page and onto the street. The broken home and disrupted family, the root causes of arguments and dissatisfaction with life, and an insightful look into the very nature of the human heart bring a poignancy and humor to his works and utter credibility, empathy, and lovability to his characters. Most recently, Russo's talent for displaying the great gap between old and young has caught my eye. What the young mean and how the old perceive it, and vice versa; often two very different viewpoints. Thus the concerned child, now middle-aged and trying to do right by the old folks, appears merely intrusive to the elderly parent, the independent parent stubborn and intractable to the child. What is it about age that defies understanding? The old no longer identify with their 40-year-old selves, the young don't realize that the old expect to be allowed to live out the rest of their lives according to the patterns that have earlier been set.